Two Anecdotes
In the early 1990s, Subramaniam Strong’s father, who served in the Indian Army, took him to Gulmarg, Kashmir, in the robust belly of an Army base truck to discover the enchantment of ice.
Strong, a snow novice, was astounded. A magical spell held him for days. Even after returning to Trishul Park, Arin noticed he remained enchanted and talked nonstop to his friends Arin, Satish Gupta, and Bhale about the ‘meadow of flowers’ he had glimpsed and feasted his eyes on. He became as though a ‘snow-strong,’ to chat about his one-of-a-kind experience with Kashmir snow with his friends waiting back home.
Once further up north, an endless landscape laden with snow and stunning views of alpine forests rising into the distant mountains greeted him. There, it was the first time he had seen naturally occurring ice (unlike the ice cubes from the fridge), and pristine white landscapes stretching in every direction his eyes could see—north and east, south and west—over a long distance. Gulmarg was a heavenly white winter wonderland in the Himalayan paradise. “White fluffy snow,” he said, was everywhere he looked. It is said that “Heaven isn't a place… It's Gulmarg.”
As far as the eye could see, Alpine trees were rich green; towering, lofty mountains were crowned with dollops of snow like vanilla ice cream; skiers were skiing; and sweeping meadows were covered in such a profundity of whitest white snow that the eyes dazzled in sheer amazement. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him that he, at that time, had a great fondness for.
Scattered cliffs and sunlit mountain summits were dolloped with the slobbering kiss of snow. Strong stood knee-deep in the numbing, milky-white valley, oohing and aahing aloud in overwhelming wonder—his first experience of the crystalline perfection of snow, a breathtakingly radiant spectacle catching brilliant sunlight right in his bare hands. His father had initially hesitated to take him to the picturesque Kashmir valley: hesitant because he’d be travelling to the command hub of an Army Base in Srinagar, primarily to attend a career workshop, with little to no chance for even a short break from work. But when the opportunity came, Strong immediately jumped into the task of persuading his father to take him along to Srinagar and then to Gulmarg; he had heard it was a land of alpine meadows with white snow and vivid flowers, and he wanted, for once, to touch and feel the snow, for the first time in his life. His father smiled and agreed.
Gulmarg was genuinely beautiful, as he recounted his experience to us once he returned home to his waiting friends. Their Army truck brought them back to the highland base somewhere in Srinagar, where they had lunch at a small Kashmiri eatery serving haak saag, rajma-chawal, and Kashmiri dum aloo paired with wood-fired breads and rotis. Two days later, he boarded a train from Delhi to travel home. Thanks to his obliging father, it was truly an unforgettable experience for Strong, for a lifetime. “All perfectly done,” he exclaimed delightfully to his friends as they all sat on the lonesome rock overlooking the evening lights palely twinkling on the far end of the main road deep across from their beloved Trishul Park.
Strong actually squealed with great delight when he held Kashmiri glacial snow ice in his hands for the first time in his life, exclaiming to his father while holding the ice in his bare hands, “Daddyyy… barafff…!”
His father watched his son with a benign smile on his face, pleased he had made the good decision, albeit made on the spur of the moment, back in their airy Trishul Park dormitory, by bringing his eldest son; the other two sons could wait for some time, to Kashmir during the peak snowfall season. For Strong, it was no less than a dream fulfilled.
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(Arin and Strong, Their Two-Film Day Adventure: Strong once proposed a plan: that he and Arin catch two Hollywood movies in a single day at the iconic Sangeet. It would be great fun, he promised. Not wanting to let the opportunity go by, Arin acquiesced at once; apparently, Strong had a great many quirky wishes to fulfil. Catching two movie shows in a day, one after the other, is just one of those. Satish and Bhale couldn’t come along because they were busy lazing around their house like usual… slugs!
And so it happened one day in 1991 or 1992: for the first time, The Silence of the Lambs and Sleeping with the Enemy were playing back-to-back at Sangeet, one after the other. The first show was at 3.30 pm, and the next began a little after 6 pm. Both films were released in 1991. That day, Strong and Arin finished their truly enjoyable, yet pointless computer crash course at Keyes, then brisk-walked to the theatre a distance away. They got balcony tickets easily, even though a throng of cinema lovers was waiting to get inside, eager to see the film. Once inside, they took the compact, cushioned seats according to the seat numbers stamped on their tickets. During the intermission, they instinctively planned to buy a 10-rupee clear packet of potato chips or tiny onion samosas, depending on what they felt like at the time of buying them, along with a chilled bottle of Thums Up, which, if unavailable, they would wash the chips down with a bottle of Gold Spot or Thrill instead, their usual cinema-snacking strategy at the movies. Sometimes, without a cold drink and a sandwich, nothing seemed right while enjoying a movie in a theatre, and catching up on a movie at Sangeet was a major event in itself. Every movie we saw there opened our eyes socially, making us nicely self-aware and well-informed about the world as we grew up in a new decade. But more than anything, it was the precious gift of friendship woven tightly into the delightful rhythm of the 1990s, our college-going years, that gave us four friends a golden chapter in the story of our lives. A story worth remembering for the rest of our lives.
That was the first and last time Arin and Strong saw two films in a day. Never did the opportunity come again. Goodness, it was great fun, but it left them slightly physically exhausted, while it was an enthralling experience for them. They considered catching up on two movies in a day once more, but that chance never came again.)
(To be continued…)
(End of part IX)
By Arindam Moulick